Harper Connelly series
Harper Connelly series by Charlaine Harris. This series is the prequel to the Midnight, Texas series. Genres and Sub-Genres Urban Fantasy / Cozy UF Mystery Series Description or Overview Harper’s paranormal gift—or curse—is her ability to locate dead people and to communicate with their spirits. This ability began after she was struck by lightning when she was a teenager. Harper and Tolliver grew up in a broken family: drug-dealing and drug-using parents each of whom had two children by previous marriages and then two children together—six children total. They lived in a decrepit trailor in Texarkana until Harper's older sister Carmen disappeared. After that, police and social workers got involved and the children were divided among foster homes. Now, Harper and her beloved stepbrother, Tolliver Lang, have established a consultant business, hiring out Harper’s services to law enforcement agencies across the country. Adventures ensue, because there is always someone who doesn’t want the body found. In each book, Harper is hired to find a dead body or bodies, generally murder victims. ~ Fang-tastic Fiction Lead's Species * Ghost Comminicator Primary Supe * Ghosts What Sets it Apart * Equal parts Cozy Mystery and Urban Fantasy. Narrative Type and Narrators * First person narrative told by Harper Connelly. Books in Series Harper Connelly series: # Grave Sight (2005) # Grave Surprise (2006) # An Ice Cold Grave (2007) # Grave Secret (2009) ~ Final Shorts, Novellas, Anthologies and Guides * Grave Sight (2006) SF Companion Series, Spinoffs, Sequels or Prequels *Midnight, Texas series (Manfred Bernardo from this series moves over to Midnight, Texas series) Other Series by Author on this Site * Sookie Stackhouse series (aka Southern Vampire Mystery series, aka Trueblood) * Midnight, Texas series World Building Setting Memphis, Tennessee Places: * Little Rock, Arkansas * South Carolina * Texas * Doraville, North Carolina Supernatural Elements ✥ Psychics (only), telepaths, Glossary: * SBI agent: 'Groups & Organizations': * World Protagonist She is making the most of an unwanted gift by providing victims' families with closure at the expense of her own health. Each time she discovers and communicates with a spirit, her strength is drained and she must live with that person's horrible memories of his or her death. Harper's relationship with Tolliver is extremely complex. In the early books, they try to maintain a sister-brother relationship and use a variety of casual one-night stands with various partners to stave off the growing attraction between them. In the later books, the two solidify their bond and face the future together. ~ Fang-tastic Fiction Book Cover Blurbs ✤ BOOK ONE—Grave Sight: Harper Connelly has what you might call a strange job: she finds dead people. She can sense the final location of a person who's passed, and share their very last moment. The way Harper sees it, she's providing a service to the dead while bringing some closure to the living - but she's used to most people treating her like a blood-sucking leech. Traveling with her step-brother Tolliver as manager and sometime-bodyguard, she's become an expert at getting in, getting paid, and getting out fast. Because for the living it's always urgent - even if the dead can wait forever. ~ Goodreads ✤ BOOK TWO—Grave Surprise: When I was fifteen, I was struck by a bolt of lightning through an open window of the trailer where we lived...I recovered, mostly. I have a strange spiderweb pattern of red on my torso and right leg, which has episodes of weakness. Sometimes my right hand shakes. I have headaches. I have many fears. And I can find dead people. That was the part that interested the professor… At the request of anthropology professor Dr. Clyde Nunley, Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver come to Memphis to give a demonstration of Harper's unique talent. And what better place to have that demonstration than in a very old cemetery? Dr. Nunley doesn't bother to hide his skepticism, especially when Harper stands atop a grave and senses two bodies beneath her - one of a centuries-dead man and the other of a young girl, recently deceased. When the grave is opened, Harper's claim is proven true. The dead girl is Tabitha Morgenstern, and eleven-year-old abducted from Nashville two years previously—a child whom Harper had tried, and failed, to find. The coincidence raises suspicions about her among the police—so she and Tolliver undertake their own hunt to find the killer. They make a nocturnal visit to the cemetery, hoping that Harper can sense something further about the murder. And then, the next morning, a third dead body is found in the grave. ~ Goodreads ✤ BOOK THREE—An Ice Cold Grave: Hired to find a boy gene missing in Doraville, North Carolina, Harper Connelly and her brother Tolliver head there, only to discover that the boy was the only one left of several who had disappeared over the previous five years. All of them teenagers. All unlikely runaways. All calling for Harper. Harper soon finds them—eight victims, buried in the half-frozen ground, all come to an unspeakable end. Afterward, what she most wants to do is collect her fee and get out of town ahead of the media storm that's soon to descend. But when she's attacked and prevented from leaving, she reluctantly becomes a part of the investigation as she learns more than she cares to about the dark mysteries and long-hidden secrets of Doraville—knowledge that makes her the next person likely to rest in an ice-cold grave. ~ Goodreads ✤ BOOK FOUR—Grave Secret: "While Tolliver slept, I wondered if it was possible that Cameron was still alive...At first, I'd thought she'd been abducted by a gang, sold into slavery, something lurid and horrible. Then I'd wondered if maybe she'd simply been fed up with her life: the tawdry parents and the tacky trailer, the sister who limped and looked abstracted, the baby sisters who never seemed to stay clean. Most days, though, I was sure she was dead." Lightning-struck sleuth Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver take a break from looking for the dead to visit the two little girls they both think of as sisters. But, as always happens when they travel to Texas, memories of their horrible childhood resurface... To make matter worse, Tolliver learns from his older brother that their father is out of jail and trying to reestablish contact with other family members. Tolliver wants nothing to do with the man - but he may not have a say in the matter. Soon, family secrets ensnare them both, as Harper finally discovers what happened to her missing sister, Cameron, so may years before. And what she finds out will change her world forever. ~ Goodreads Category:Series